


Mercy upon the fallen and the lost

by emocsibe



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Drabble, I mean it's almost a happy ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8380855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emocsibe/pseuds/emocsibe
Summary: After his Billy dies in Rose Creek, Goodnight starts to see things.





	

Goodnight has always known that there are different lights one can see; friendly or warning lights, ones that would signal a home or a battle. He has seen many of those: the fireplace’s red and comfortable glow when he was at home, the flashes of guns and cannons on the battlefield, the sharp cuts made by lightning on the smoke-blurred night sky. Some people who have faced Death and lived, tell stories about it not being a hooded figure with a scythe but a blinding light, a fancy blaze of the end. Goodnight doesn’t know what to believe.

He believes, however, in his own dooming light, for he sees it. It has been with him since he survived the battle at Rose Creek: the ghost of Billy Rocks in its radiant glory, a blinding, bright, white sun burning through his grief. The spirit is only lingering around him at night at first, haunting him, yet guarding his dreams, chasing the nightmares away, always looking at him with the same loving eyes it had when it was still a human. It only gives him more sorrow and his guilt doubles, then triples with time: Billy, his dearest Billy stays with him and looks after him instead of resting; instead of finding peace in the heavens. Goodnight doesn’t blame it for not letting the man himself find his own tranquillity, his own peace with himself, with the world and with Billy’s absence, because he knows that there will be none, ever. With Billy's departure his heart also left the world of the living, leaving a hurting husk of a man behind, only filled with a fragmented and lost soul, shrieking to God and to Lucifer for the injustice that was done. 

When he rests and lays in bed, Billy’s spectre stands beside the bedpost, looks at Goodnight and doesn’t blink. Its eyes are dull and wide open – Goodnight thinks it might be because Billy has stared Death in the eyes, and saw what it really was. And Death in return, turned its gaze on such a man in that damned church-tower, that it had to take him: a powerful and kind man, a magnificent one.

Oh, and Billy’s light is truly magnificent, blinding, a hot pain against his eyes, a magnet for his tears and soundless cries for mercy. His chest hurts and his lips tremble and legs give up under him the first time when he sees the ghost on the streets in broad daylight. He faints as Billy’s image floats closer, its legs not moving, never moving, eyes never blinking – no, no; Billy is not waking, never living again, never kissing him again, no, no ,no. 

After that he just looks away from it – or rather, wants to look away but can’t: he misses his love terribly and wants to remember him for as long as he can – the line of lips, the curve of jaws, the fall of hair and shape of eyes – that one beautiful person that never will be again. But he never averts his gaze, oh no, never from his dear one, and people think he’s lost his mind as he smiles at the nothing at the square and stares sometimes for long moments at the walls of buildings around him, as if there was something. He wants to scream at them that there is something: there’s Billy, his light-crowned love, his dead half who’s returned. He wants to shout and hit them until they see, until they know, until they feel how hurt he is, but only walks away and Billy follows him in a slow trail of unearthly starlight. 

The ghost’s heat Goodnight always feels at his back when they walk, and he’s felling it now as well, as he faces the ocean stretching between America and Korea. The breeze thrown into his face mingles with tears as he walks closer to the cliff's edge, following his blazing heart. Billy’s ghost is before him, legs only inches away from the rock, floating above the deep darkness, smiling as sweetly as Goodnight has never seen the spectre before, and it is transcendent. Oh, perfect Billy, always close to him, oh, wonderful Billy, always loving him. He reaches out trying to pull it into a loving hug, to pull it close to his chest, and steps, steps further and further. He feels his hands being grabbed and his heart throbs in his chest – how much he missed his touch, oh God, how much...

He doesn’t feel the fall’s cold wind nor the waves’ cool temper, no: he relishes in the warmth of the embrace his Billy is finally giving him, and he smiles. He breathes water and kisses Billy, and his hands tangle into his seaweed hair. He breathes death, and Billy greats him with a smile.

And he breathes no more.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize, and yes, I'll escort myself out now.
> 
> (If you spot any grammar mistakes, please tell me so I can correct them.)


End file.
